“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth as she recognized Gleda and her husband, Liam. They lay side by side, the pallor of their faces a dismal gray, their clothes still clinging and wet, water dripping onto a puddle on the stone floor. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head as if she could dispel the image by denying it. Gleda looked so small and frail. Bryanna couldn’t believe that just yesterday the feisty little woman had told her about Kambria, the woman who was supposedly her mother. “How . . . how could this have happened?”
“An accident,” the captain of the guard said, his face sober. “M’lady, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here. Mayhap you should wait at the keep for—”
“What kind of accident?” she demanded, ignoring his suggestion.
“She and her husband drowned in the creek, not far from their home,” he said. “Two hunters on their way out this morning found them and brought them back to the keep.”
“Why did they drown?” she demanded.
“Who knows?” The captain shook his head. “The sheriff, he’s on his way to look at the creek, but probably Liam here came looking for his wife, who had been late coming home from the keep. ’Twas a bad storm. Mayhap the horse shied and she fell, striking her head on a rock. . . . There is a mark upon her forehead. But who knows? ’Tis a tragedy.”
Bryanna wanted to collapse, to fall to her knees and scream at Isa or God or anyone who would listen. Instead she gritted her teeth. “You are certain this is an accident?” she demanded, feeling the eyes of all the soldiers in the room boring into her.
“Aye. As far as we can tell, nothing was taken. Their horse was wandering nearby, still saddled and bridled. There were coins in Liam’s pocket, and their house seemed undisturbed.”
Bryanna found it impossible to believe that on the very day Gleda had spilled a secret she’d held for sixteen years, both she and her husband would die, not just one, in his or her sleep, or after a long illness, but together and suddenly. It seemed too coincidental.
And yet why would someone kill both Gleda and her husband? To what end?
She heard the priest huffing and puffing as he picked his way along the wet bent grass and mud. “Oh, dear,” he said, viewing the bodies.
Before he could suggest that everyone pray over Gleda and Liam, Bryanna slipped outside into the fresh air. Bile rose in her throat, and she feared she would lose all of her breakfast. Leaning back against the wet stones of the gatehouse, she tried to stave off tears by staring at the ominous clouds scudding across the sky.
What had happened to Gleda?
To Liam?
An accident?
Or, she feared, something darker and much more sinister.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She couldn’t stay here.
Sniffing back her tears, Bryanna hurried to the keep. Though she knew the priest would want her to stay and pray for Gleda’s soul, the very soul he’d dismissed so easily at breakfast, she had no stomach for it. She needed to get away. To escape.
To find Gavyn, the voice within her mind demanded as she chased a waddling goose up the path and sidestepped the spots where others from the flock had defecated.
Word of Gleda’s death had already whispered through the castle walls, and children were huddled near the door of the gatehouse while laundresses, eyeing the steely sky, carried baskets toward a huge open-air shed to dry their recently scrubbed linens. Gossip floated on the air. . . .
“Drowned, fer sure, but coulda hit her head. . . .”
“Both of ’em, ye say? ’Tis a shame.” The heavier of the two women clucked her tongue and shook her scarf-wrapped head as she set her tub onto the ground.
“A shame or a sign from God,” the other laundress said. “Old Gleda, some people say she was a witch. . . . Well, if not her, then at least her niece, the one who died a while back.”
Two boys raced past, their noses running and hair flying. Gleefully they chased three dogs heading toward the gatehouse.
“Hey! You, there! James Miller! Get those pups back to the kennel master, right now! You, too, Jones! Now!” She turned back to the thinner woman, adding, “The witch’s name was Kambria, if I remember right.”
“Aye.” Folding the linens over a strung robe, her heavy friend nodded. “’Twas the one. Must have been some sixteen years ago, mayhap more, but a horrible stoning.”
“If you ask me,” the laundress muttered under her breath, “nothing’s too horrible for a witch.”
Bryanna tried to dismiss their gossip as she walked briskly past the tongue-clucking laundry workers and flew into the castle. She took the stairs two at a time and strode into her bedchamber, where a fire had been lit, the rushes cleaned. Without thinking twice, she gathered her things and began packing them into the leather bag she’d carried all the way from Calon. As she checked to be sure she was tucking away the dagger wrapped in the map, the crimson silk bed hanging touched her cheek, causing her to venture one last glance at the bed.
She bit her lip. How drunk had she been to have acted so wanton, so willing, so demanding? Hadn’t she nearly begged Gavyn to stay with her? She blushed and swore under her breath. Had he really come to her last night? If so, where was he now? Where did he go when he left her?
What was it Gleda had said? That she had to meet her mother, dig up a grave and . . . and . . . what?
Open the coffin. That was it.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered and made the sign of the cross quickly over her chest. It seemed crazy, but then everything did, from talking to dead women to visitations from phantom lovers. Not a ghost, Bryanna. Gavyn was real. You only have to look at the sheets again or feel the soreness between your legs to know that last night happened. Gavyn came to your bed . . . while Gleda and her husband died.
“God in heaven.” She looked down at the pouch in her hand. The damned dagger. “Sacred Dagger,” she reminded herself. What twiddle! And now it was not only tied with a thin leather string, but also the twine of goat’s hair that Gleda had twisted. For the first time since Gleda had handed the pouch to her, she studied it.
Something was different. Or was it?
Though she felt an urgency to leave, she took the time to untie the bindings and flatten the map out. The dagger looked the same, but now instead of one scrap of doeskin, there were two, one layered upon the other.
“What?” She slid the knife to one side and laid the two pieces side by side on the bed. Her heart knocking, she rotated the second piece until it obviously meshed with the first and the map was suddenly twice its original size. Now, not only was Tarth visible, but another village was revealed. She suspected that the squiggly lines represented water, a river, and there were other scrapings—runes and symbols—upon both pieces of doeskin. Where the two maps joined, there seemed to be part of a hieroglyphic message, one she didn’t understand.
But she did see one small drawing that was clear as a mountain stream: a simple drawing of a cross and casket.
No doubt the place Kambria was buried.
So why had Gleda slipped this piece of the map to her without saying anything? Had she experienced a premonition that she might die? Did she realize her hours were short? Then why not warn Bryanna? Or had the old woman simply wrapped the folds of deer hide together, intending to explain about it later?
Except there was no “later.”
Gleda and poor deaf Liam were dead.
As was Isa, who had also owned a portion of the map.
Was Bryanna, too, only a step ahead of the messenger of death? Her heart thudded in fear at the prospect.
What did it all mean?
She couldn’t stop for even a second to think about it; nay, she had to keep moving, stay one step ahead of whoever or whatever was chasing her.
She found Isa’s amulet, the one she always wore for protection, and slid the leather thong over her head. The smooth stone fit naturally below the hollow of her throat. There. She needed all the help she could get.
/> She said a quick prayer to Morrigu, the Great Mother, and then, as a precaution, one to the Christian God, invoking his Son’s name. No time for runes or spells or mass this morning. She grabbed her satchel and mantle and hurried down the stairs. Father Patrick would be detained until the afternoon. There was the matter of the two dead villagers, and at breakfast he had mentioned his long list of duties to maintain peace in the keep. This morning he would be listening to the farmers’ squabbles as well as making certain all the taxes and fees had been paid for using Lord Mabon’s lands for grazing and hunting.
Glad for an excuse not to see the tedious priest, Bryanna found the steward on his way into the great hall. “Please give Father Patrick my best wishes and thank him for his hospitality.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Aye, I must be on my way,” she said, then lied through her teeth as effortlessly as if she had been doing so all of her life. “I have family awaiting me and I need to leave soon so that I can arrive before nightfall.” With that, she headed straight for the stables.
As she walked through the bailey, she saw that more people had gathered near the gatehouse and many of the workers had interrupted their daily tasks to huddle together and discuss the disquieting deaths of the beekeeper and her husband. Moving quickly toward the stables, Bryanna passed a thatcher working on the roof of a new structure where two other men were weaving wattle for the walls. There was some discussion about the placement of a window, and they seemed the only two people in the keep who weren’t consumed by the deaths of Liam and Gleda.
Bryanna passed them and cut through a pathway past the armorer’s hut. For a fleeting second she thought she recognized Gavyn and stopped dead in her tracks. When the man looked up from his work pounding chain mail, she realized how mistaken she was. Though the armorer, too, suffered from a bruise upon his face, his features were softer and flatter than Gavyn’s, the lines on his face suggesting another ten years.
’Twas just another trick of the mind.
One of far too many.
At the stables she was met by a burly man with a short neck and a red nose. The hair sticking out beneath his cap was gray and curling like lamb’s wool. As he wound a rope between his arm and the vee between his thumb and forefinger, he regarded her from beneath the folds of drooping eyelids.
“I’m Lady Bryanna,” she said, her eyes adjusting to the darkened interior, where horses’ heads were thrust over empty mangers and the smells of leather, dung, and oil were thick. One reddish destrier snorted and tossed up his head, then stomped a heavy hoof.
“Quiet there, Rosemont,” the man said to the roan, then took the time to rub the nervous horse’s long nose. “There ya be.” With a smile showing a few missing teeth, he turned to Bryanna. “’Tis Neddym, I am, stable master for Lord Romney, er, Mabon. Sorry. I can’t quite get used to the change yet. Lord Romney, he was a good man. Fair. I’m thinkin’ his son, when he gits back, will be the same.” He hung the coiled rope upon a peg jutting from a post. “What can I do fer ye?”
“I’d like my horse,” she said, pointing to Alabaster. “I left her here last night and it’s time I left.”
He frowned. “Usually the lord, er, in this case Father Patrick, he sends word.”
“He’s busy.”
The big man shrugged. “Makes no matter to me. I’ll see that the white one, she’s saddled and ready in a few minutes.”
“Thank you.” Bryanna eased out of the dark interior and waited beneath an overhang that offered some protection for a boy seated upon a stump and repairing the bit of a bridle. She rubbed her arms and glanced at the gatehouse, again thinking of Gleda. The crowd was dispersing, soldiers ordering people back to work. She recognized the constable and Quigg and . . . Her heart leapt as her eyes narrowed on a man who was of the same size and build as Gavyn, a man hanging back from the rest of the throng, one who cast a quick glance in her direction before walking behind a cart filled with stones for repairing the castle walls.
She stared after him, her pulse racing, and the man, dressed in clothes similar to those Gavyn had worn, again glanced in her direction, only to disappear around the corner of the stables.
It had to be Gavyn!
Had to.
She took a step in his direction and started to call out to him, then thought better of it. She was imagining things again, that was all. Just as she had as a child with the friends only she could see. Her mind sometimes created images that just weren’t there.
’Twas almost as if last night was nothing but a dream, an erotic, sexual fantasy, as well as a dark nightmare.
“Here ye go, m’lady,” Neddym said from somewhere behind her.
She spun to find the big man leading Alabaster from the stables.
“Oh, thank you.” She strapped her bag to the saddle, then climbed onto the horse and adjusted her hood. Though it wasn’t raining and the clouds were breaking apart, allowing glimpses of blue sky and sunlight, the day was still cold. She rode through the castle gates and headed to the river and Gleda’s house. Although the old woman wasn’t going to be with her, Bryanna would need some tools if she were intent on digging up a coffin that had been buried for sixteen years . . . her mother’s coffin. She shivered at the thought, but pressed onward, trying not to think about the dull ache between her legs.
“Let us not allow this to come between us,” Morwenna said. She’d found her husband on the watchtower, alone, standing under the flagpole where the standard of Castle Calon snapped in the wind. His hands were planted on the ledge, his shoulders bunched as he gazed across the bailey and outer defenses toward Wybren, land of his birth, only a day’s ride from here. Although the fire damage of more than a year ago had been repaired, Morwenna suspected the horrors still burned on in his mind.
Or was it longing she saw in his sky blue eyes? Did her husband think often of returning to Wybren, a fortress twice the size of Calon with perfectly rounded turrets mounted high on the castle walls? In truth, Wybren was in need of a ruler. The steward was doing his best to maintain order in the keep, but in order to prosper a castle needed a ruler.
The sun had risen and already hammers were ringing, saws growling, hounds baying in the nearby woods. A hawk swooped from the sky and disappeared from view as two boys carried buckets of sloshing milk into the kitchen.
“You did not think you could confide in me?” He turned to face her, his dark hair glistening in the sunlight. The shadow of suspicion in his blue eyes broke her heart.
“I . . . I was wrong.” Oh, those words were hard to say. “I should have talked to you first.”
His lips tightened. He waited for her to go on.
“I was afraid that you would stop me and I was so fearful for my sister, so certain that . . . that she needed me. I’m sorry.”
A muscle worked near his temple and he glanced away from her, his teeth grinding a bit. “’Tis my fault as well,” he admitted. “I should not have moved into your keep. You were used to doing things your own way, without anyone interfering. You consider Calon yours.”
“Nay,” she argued, but when he raised a questioning eyebrow, she could say nothing further.
“We should move, spend time at Wybren, not just here.”
She felt a new panic. “Who would run Calon while we were away? The constable? The steward?” She thought of Alfrydd, the scarecrow of a steward, and shook her head. Nay, she could not trust her keep to either man. And yet she could understand her husband’s desire to return to Wybren. Was he not the only survivor of the dreadful fire there who was now fit to rule Wybren Castle?
“You could trust Alexander, the captain of the guard. Or mayhap your brother Tadd.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s much too busy lifting skirts and rolling dice and drinking ale to run a keep.” She paced from one side of the tower to the other. “Nay, none of them will do.”
“That’s the trouble now, isn’t it? No one will do. Not even your husband.”
“No!” she said, an
d then realized there was a grain of truth in his brutal words. She glanced to the bailey. Far below, she heard a squeal, then watched as two boys chased the escaping piglet along a path near the candlemaker’s hut.
“Morwenna.” His voice was soft seduction. He stepped closer, his hands surrounding her upper arms. “I know you spent many years trying to prove to everyone that you were just as strong and smart as Kelan, and I know you have had your share of . . . disappointments. But, Morwenna, I am your husband and you need to trust me.”
That much she understood. “You would not have allowed anyone to follow Bryanna.”
“Is that what you think? ’Tis not true, but I would have liked to have had a voice in the matter. I would have preferred to discuss it with you rather than having you sneak around like a stray cat in the night, purloining from the treasury.” His hands tightened over her arms for a second; then he released her. “But you are not completely mistaken,” he admitted. “I would not have allowed him to go after her.” Any warmth in his expression was now gone. “You knew this, and yet you went behind my back.”
“I said I’m sorry,” she said, and she truly regretted her decision to act without consulting her husband. ’Twas a mistake to hire his brother, an excellent tracker, aye, but a man whose reputation had been blemished time and again by his own selfishness and poor judgment. Had his improprieties not scandalized all of Wybren? Had he not ambushed his own brother and left him for dead? Had he not stolen Morwenna’s heart and abandoned her when she was with child? ’Twas all in the past, and yet Morwenna could see how it still made her husband’s heart heavy to think of his brother. “There’s nothing more I can do now.”
“You could call him back. Send some of the soldiers. They could track him down.”
“But Bryanna,” she protested.
“We could send someone else to find her. Alexander would do anything you asked.”